Protection Is Assured
A plan to reconstruct the roughly 1,000-foot-long rock revetment protecting the Montauk Lighthouse will ensure that the historic structure is still standing 100 years from now despite ongoing erosion and extreme weather events, the East Hampton Town Board was told on Tuesday.
Brian Frank, the chief environmental analyst with the town’s Planning Department, told the board that the federal Army Corps of Engineers’ 2005 evaluation to rebuild the revetment, which is around 30 years old, never came to fruition, but an environmental impact statement prepared at the time was updated in April.
That update corresponded with an announcement by Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office that reconstruction of the revetment would proceed, funded by a Hurricane Sandy relief bill approved by Congress in 2013, as well as state funding. The Army Corps, which will oversee the project, said that it was necessary to keep the 222-year-old lighthouse and associated structures from toppling into the Atlantic Ocean.
Fifteen-ton armor stones will be delivered by truck, barge, or both, Mr. Frank said, depending on a determination by the contractor. A contract for the work has yet to be awarded. The project will increase the revetment’s size by almost 4,000 square feet, according to the Army Corps, he said.
Two staging areas for the project, one in Turtle Cove to the south, the other to the north, will impede access by surfers, fishermen, and others for the duration of the project, which the Army Corps has indicated could commence before year’s end.
“Now that the town has an adopted local waterfront revitalization plan,” Mr. Frank said, “the corps is soliciting the town’s opinion that the revetment reconstruction project is consistent with the [plan],” which was adopted in 2007. While the local plan prohibits new erosion control structures, the revetment is mostly located in a coastal erosion zone that allows for the repair of existing structures, as well as for new structures, he said. “The environmental review that the corps did looked at a variety of alternatives, including nonstructural and even relocating the lighthouse. There’s an existing substantial stone revetment there, and assessing the impacts of re working an existing structure are obviously far less than the construction of a brand-new erosion control structure.”
Consistency with the waterfront revitalization plan largely relates to public access to the lighthouse and shoreline, Mr. Frank said. “This is obviously an iconic resource of the state, one of the most recognizable features. . . . It receives a tremendous amount of visitation from the public, from schools, from residents, from transient visitors. The access to the shoreline is a portion of that.”
Members of the board asked for details as to what areas would be off-limits to the public. The contractor will determine those details, Mr. Frank said, but said that access to a cleared area above Turtle Cove will have to be prohibited.
The Montauk Historical Society owns the lighthouse. The revetment, Mr. Frank said, extends onto parcels owned by entities including New York State Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, the Long Island State Park Commission, and the town.
Gregory Donohue, who is the historical society’s erosion control director, told the board that the timing of funding and engineering represent “the last time we will ever see this opportunity for the lighthouse.” The new revetment will feature proper slope angles to buttress the shoreline against the ocean, as well as a flat promenade, or bench. “When the next 50-year storm comes,” he said, “we won’t get overtopped.”